Welsh Kite Trust

Perhaps as a result of my city birth I have always enjoyed the great outdoors and apparently even at this early age I asked all the customers in our shop if they had a garden and whether I could go and see it - we didn’t have one. Some of the earliest recollections I have involve natural history, birds in particular.

I remember my extreme excitement at seeing my first kestrel and running over the fields, arm held high, screaming ‘Kes’ at the top of my voice, totally convinced that it would come down and land on my wrist. I also remember the grisly collection of skulls, wings, feathers and eggs (children are the only people to have any resemblance of an excuse for egg-collecting as they do not know any better). Where my interest in natural history came from is not fully apparent.

My parents were both born in Birmingham and were not overly interested in the subject. Wherever it came from it has always been an overwhelmingly important part of me. In 1977, aged 15, I started to train as a BTO bird-ringer with my biology teacher. At that moment my promising career as a vet went right out of the window! I knew instantly that being a “bird warden” was what I wanted to be. I remember trying, without much success, to explain my choice to the school careers advisor who desperately tried to interest me in “proper” jobs.

My first encounter with a Red Kite was on a school birdwatching trip to Tregaron Bog in about 1978. High over Devil’s Bridge our Frenchmaster spotted a distant speck which he identified as a kite. That was as good a view as we got of that particular kite but it was still immensely exciting. Ten minutes later we got a much better view as we very nearly ran one down in the minibus! From that moment to this, kites have featured prominently in my life.

Whilst at University in Aberystwyth, doing an Honours degree in Environmental Science, I spent two Easter vacations as a voluntary warden for the RSPB. It was there that I first met Peter Davis, Peter Walters Davies, John Davis and John Roberts, four of the Trust’s existing Trustees. I still recall the great enjoyment and satisfaction I gained from those few weeks guarding kite nests from egg-collectors. In 1986, a year after leaving University, I got my first contract with what was then the Nature Conservancy Council, surveying Ravens in mid Wales.

Peter Davis, who was the vertebrate field officer for Wales, was my supervisor. I was absolutely mad keen on ringing all the Raven chicks in the nests I was monitoring (something I have only recently given up, having ringed over 3,000 of them). It was here that my previously unrealised tree-climbing skills were honed. Health and Safety Officers would have nightmares about it nowadays. I often scrambled up 60ft pine trees in the middle of nowhere with little if any safety equipment and often no-one with me. It is a matter of pure luck that my remains aren’t still lying, undiscovered at the base of some great Scots Pine.

Peter, not one to miss an opportunity, managed to arrange a small contract to maintain my services as a tree-climber for the next few seasons kite monitoring, and it is still somewhat of an embarrassment that my involvement with kites did not stem from my knowledge or intellect but from the fact that the backs of my knuckles trail on the ground when I walk!

Little has changed since then. My life still revolves heavily around birds. In addition to my work with the Welsh Kite Trust I also run my own Ornithological Consultancy and undertake contracts on a range of other species including Choughs, Nightjars, Barn Owls, Ring Ousels, breeding and wintering waders amongst others. I now manage, somehow, to fit all this around my new found responsibilities as a dad.

Quite often I can be seen with a rucsack and tripod in one arm and my two year old daughter Amy slung under the other. I even met my partner Caroline under the Royal Pier in Aberystwyth whilst mist netting some of the 15,000 very noisy and very smelly Starlings. Caroline, who works for the Countryside Council for Wales, is currently incubating our second clutch and I am desperately trying to grow another arm!